Baldur's Gate III (2023)

Had a run-in with a really annoying bug. Two of my companions had an argument that led to a fight and the game prompts me to pick one to side with. But when I make my choice, the game bugs out dumps me back to my camp. Meanwhile, my party members talk as though the companion I didn't side with is gone, but they are still around and hanging out in my camp as though nothing has happened. If I reload my save, the issue happens again, and I'm afraid to continue in case it ruins one of the storylines. I searched online and there seems to be a way to work around the bug that I still need to try, but it still really ruined the moment.

Haven't dealt with this level of game-breaking junk in an RPG since Skyrim.

So they let jaheira overpower your character with vines no skill checks involved or roleplaying based on how your class would escape the vines just a strength option, what a bummer. (also those vines moved slow af)

Feels to me like they just wanted to make a character from the past games look good, but just ends up spoling the moment at least for me since I'm a power fantasy player.

Loving the game so far. Really struggling with work today cause all I can think about is this game.

It really is a next evolution on Divinity: Original Sin 2, rather than a pure successor to the original Baldur's Gate games. I'm not a huge Forgotten Realms buff and I was never able to get into the original games, so this is mostly fine with me; Larian's goofy writing always felt true to the way me and my friends played D&D. I do find the game to still be quite buggy at times, and I'd kill for a better autosave system to save me from having to be paranoid about remembering to quicksave. Can't wait to start a multiplayer playthrough with some friends.

I've put in 15 or so hours over the past few days and I'm having a blast. I'm happy to report the power of choice and relative creative problem solving is possible in this one. I had one instance yesterday where I needed to get back into a base. The main two options I could see were going in through the front door killing everything in sight, or sneak past some sleeping guards and break down a crumbling wall without alerting them.

I tried the sneaky route but kept getting caught because I needed to jump down from on high into the vicinity of the the sleeping guards and my thudding into the ground kept waking them up. Then I remembered I had the 'silence' spell on the party's wizard.

I had that wonderful feeling of 'wait, no, will that work?'. I cast silence to create a bubble of silence where my team needed to land and then again around the area where I needed to noisily kick down the wall and I was into the base in no time.

The smile that beamed across my face, I tell you..

It's absolutely amazing how well BG3 is doing. Over 800k simultaneous players on Steam, putting it at #9 all time across all games. Very cool to see a CRPG get that type of attention.

I'm not the biggest fan of Larian's writing and game design, but I'm still mostly having a good time with it myself. I would have much preferred to see Obsidian carry the Baldur's Gate torch, but I'm just trying to let the game stand on its own and enjoy it for what it is.

Honestly on the fence: been playing it for 10 hours over the span of two days and what I could notice there were still some things dragged from the EA version.

• Conversation bugs still happening that were carried from the EA build. Weird, considering we waited three years for them to be put through feedback and 'corrected'.
• Frames diving down after one hour of gameplay with no unnecessary stressors on the computer if not the game running (no Steam/Discord Overlays, no outside game optimization). Tempted to try the same trick that seemed to work with Hogwarts Legacy.
• Weird glitches and bugs such as conversations skipping, conversations hanging, sometimes conversations just somewhat cut short.

As far as gameplay goes, it's a standard D&D-esque game: it does what it does well, to a degree.

I wish it were better but for $60 and three years of 'preparation' and 'bug fixes', there's a lot to be desired.

Appeals to people who generally like 'popularized' D&D campaigns (Exandria, Critical Role, TAZ...) resulting in being a bit too forced on the humor at times if not downright creepy in some character interactions.

Not a full review because I am still playing it.

Baldur's Gate (1) and Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn are two of the first cRPGs that I ever played. They instilled in me a love of D&D and high fantasy in video games. I have awesome memories of playing those two games with friends and girlfriends (whom begrudgingly agreed to play with me) and loving every minute of it. I also loved playing NWN, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain on Intellivision (I'm old) and other RPGs, tabletop or otherwise.

I am ecstatic that Larian Studios put together a game that seems to be worthy of the title "Baldur's Gate". I am extremely excited to play it, though I feel the need to go back and play the previous two games to their completion.

Tomorrow is BG3's release.

We are being asked to:

1. re-download the Early Access version if you have played it in order to manually delete all save files from the game itself (not the folder, or Larian and Steam will have a fit).
2. uninstall the Early Access version because it has absolutely no bearing and nothing to share with the Full Release.
3. re-install the Full Release version (150+gb of game), specifically on an SSD storage.

And I should be glad and behave like all Larian fanboys and think that the three years long Early Access has been worthwhile when this is the launch we get.